Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c12.60

c12.60

Of other notices of India (passing over the purely fictitious account given by Philostratus of the wanderings of that prince of impostors, Apollonius of Tyana) we may select for mention a little pamphlet of the fifth century on the *Nations* of India, included in the Romance History of Alexander of the Pseudo-Kallisthenes ¹. The writer mentions having visited Southern India. There he was the guest of Moses, bishop of Adule, no doubt a Nestorian prelate. It is interesting to observe this early reference to the Christian Church in Southern India. He was deterred by the great heat from going far inland, but a friend of his, a Theban scholar, had shewn greater courage, and gave the writer some miscellaneous and not very accurate information about what he had seen. He visited Ceylon and was falsely informed that the king of that island was overlord of South India. He was told about the Laccadives, a group of " thousands of islands " (Laksha dvīpa), where the coconut was plentiful, and he observed that pork was never eaten in the East. He learnt that the pepper of Southern India was collected by the Bisadae, stunted men with large heads. These are the Besatae of the Periplus ², a name contemptuously given by the Indians to the aboriginal tribes, derived from vishāda, dullness ³. Of the Brahmins, the writer recounts the usual stories, with no novel or interesting particulars.